Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2014
From ACM Opinion
Singularity or Transhumanism: What Word Should We se to Discuss the Future?
Singularity. Posthuman. Techno-Optimism, Cyborgism. Humanity+. Immortalist. Machine intelligence. Biohacker. Robotopia. Life extension. Transhumanism.
From ACM Opinion
The History Inside S
Every day our DNA breaks a little. Special enzymes keep our genome intact while we're alive, but after death, once the oxygen runs out, there is no more repair.
From ACM Opinion
Why Big Data Has Some Big Problems When It Comes to Public Policy
For all the talk about using big data and data science to solve the world’s problems—and even all the talk about big data as one of the world’s problems—it seems like we still have a long way to go.
From ACM Opinion
Why You Shouldn't Be Freaked Out By What Marketers Know About You
Becky Burr, chief privacy officer of Neustart, discusses the company's privacy-by-design policy, public misconceptions about data collection, and what she does to safeguard her information.
From ACM Opinion
In Praise of Efficient Price Gouging
In the four years since the car service Uber launched, it has been beset by criticism from myriad groups, including city officials annoyed by its sometimes cavalier attitude toward regulation and taxi companies annoyed by increased…
From ACM Careers
Roots of a High-Tech Revolution
Chuck Hull, 75, is co-founder and chief technology officer of 3D Systems. He is the inventor of the 3-D printer, which recently celebrated its 31st anniversary.
From ACM Opinion
A nified Theory
For the last half-century we've had a popular notion that our intellectual culture is sundered in two—the literary and the scientific.
From ACM Opinion
The New Editors of the Internet
Bowing to their better civic natures, and the pleas of James Foley's family, Twitter and YouTube have pulled down videos and photos of his murder.
From ACM Opinion
How to Save the Net: Keep It Open
For all of its history, the Internet has enjoyed the fruits of an openness principle: the idea that anyone can reach any site online and that information and data should be freely exchangeable.
From ACM Opinion
Tor Project's Struggle to Keep the Dark Net in the Shadows
The BBC has interviewed Andrew Lewman, executive director of the Tor Project.
From ACM Opinion
Anatomy of an Air Strike: Three Intelligence Streams Working in Concert
In a fast-moving war with an elusive foe like the Islamic State militants, information is as important as guns, jet fighters and bombs.
From ACM Opinion
Police Cameras Can Shed Light, but Raise Privacy Concerns
Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager who was shot during an encounter with police in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9, was recorded by a convenience store surveillance camera a few minutes before he was killed, according to police.
From ACM Opinion
James Foley: Extremists Battle with Social Media
Just as Islamic State (IS) has swept across Iraq, so too has it swarmed over social media—using the platform with a sophistication never before witnessed in this way.
From ACM Opinion
Cryptography Expert Says, 'pgp Encryption Is Fundamentally Broken, Time For Pgp to Die'
A Senior cryptography expert has claimed multiple issues with PGP email encryption—an open source end-to-end encryption to secure email.
From ACM Opinion
The Engineer of the Original Apple Mouse Talks About His Remarkable Career
Jim Yurchenco was responsible for squeezing the guts inside the impossibly slim Palm V.
From ACM Opinion
Could Google Glass Ruin Your Memory?
We’ve all done it: We’re at an event, we take a bunch of photos with our phones, we take a selfie and maybe one with a friend, we post all the images online, and we’re done.
From ACM Opinion
How to Save the Net: Don’t Give In to Big Isps
The Internet has already changed how we live and work, and we're only just getting started. Who'd have thought even five years ago that people would be streaming Ultra HD 4K video over their home Internet connections?
From ACM TechNews
Stroustrup: Why the 35-Year-Old C++ Still Dominates 'real' Dev
C++ designer Bjarne Stroustrup says the programming language remains vital and relevant 35 years after he first designed it because of its ability to handle complexity, making it the go-to solution for telecom, financial, and…
From ACM Opinion
Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet
All these people are trying to kill email.
From ACM Opinion
Former Nsa Deputy Director John C. Inglis
More than a year after ex-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden began leaking details of the agency's electronic surveillance programs, questions remain about how he accessed so many documents, and about the technology…
From ACM Opinion
Why the Public Library Beats Amazon—for Now
A growing stack of companies would like you to pay a monthly fee to read e-books, just like you subscribe to Netflix to binge on movies and TV shows.
From ACM Opinion
Beyond Classic Brain Illustrations That Make S Drool
I threw down a bit of a challenge last month at the Association of Medical Illustrators Conference in Minnesota.
From ACM Opinion
Okcupid's Co-Founder on Experiments, Data Science and the Myth of the 'unicorn'
Christian Rudder, co-founder and president of the IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s OkCupid, caused a stir recently when he responded to Facebook's news feed controversy with some no-regrets commentsabout the dating website's own experiments…
From ACM Opinion
What It's Like to Fly Passenger Planes from the Ground
Bob Fraser explains what it feels like to pilot a Jetstream airliner containing passengers on 800-kilometre trips from his desk at BAE Systems in Warton, U.K.
From ACM Opinion
Founder of America's Biggest Hacker Conference: 'we nderstand the Threat Now'
For one weekend every year, thousands of the world’s best—or worst, depending on your point of view—hackers meet in Las Vegas, Nevada, for Defcon.
From ACM Opinion
Artificial Intelligence Will Not Turn Into a Frankenstein's Monster
The singularity—or, to give it its proper title, the technological singularity. It's an idea that has taken on a life of its own; more of a life, I suspect, than what it predicts ever will.
From ACM Opinion
Why One of Cybersecurity's Thought Leaders ses a Pager Instead of a Smart Phone
In the computer and network security industry, few people are as well known as Dan Geer.
From ACM Opinion
I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook For Two Days. Here's What It Did to Me
There's this great Andy Warhol quote you’ve probably seen before: "I think everybody should like everybody."
From ACM Opinion
How Wwi Codebreakers Taught Your Gas Meter to Snitch on You
In the depths of night on August 5th 1914 the British Cable Ship Alert took the first significant action of World War I, severing the five German submarine cables that ran through the English Channel.
From ACM Opinion
Little Green Men Might Not Be So 'green'
Humans are affecting the Earth’s systems on a global scale. Industrial pollutants are accumulating in our atmosphere with the potential for long-term impact on global climate and biodiversity.